200th Post, Less Than 20 Hours!

So, it's the 200th post and with less than 20 hours before my trip to Beijing, what better to leave you with than some very new works, literally just tested/ produced on Wednesday for my collaborative project with Thomas Sauvin. What you are seeing, the very first sneaky peek to the first silk screen tests for my intervention into the Silvermine, working with hand drawn screens, produced through my paintings you glimpse the beauty of this medium. These will debut at the Format Photo Festival in Derby where Thomas and I will exhibit our collaborative projects primary, experimental material.

With this in mind, I await an 10-11 hour flight to Beijing and land on Monday morning to bright blue skies, (from what I hear) and an enormous archive of imagery I could of only dreamed of seeing, experiencing and importantly working with. I will be sure to update where-ever as possible and look forward to all that China has to offer!

再見，看到您的到來

Only 2 Weeks to go...

So it is nearly here, this time in 2 weeks I will be BA to Beijing! I collected my Visa this week and all is ready for my residency to start in just a few more days, 15 to be precise! I cannot explain how exciting this trip is going to be, and I think it is the start of many this year. The project which I will be working on is a collaborative one, working with the wonderful Thomas Sauvin, with his archive. 

Recently the Guardian spoke to Thomas about the archive, from which I will be working from/ with and here is a little except into the wonders that await me...

"Recently, Thomas Sauvin has been a bit obsessed by women with fridges.

Tourists in front of the Mona Lisa are another fascination: "You have a glass box in front of the painting, dozens of people fighting to see, the flash - it's the perfect horrible image," he said with delight.

Over almost four years, the Beijing-based French artist has amassed more than 500,000 negatives from Chinese amateur photographers which had, until his intervention, been destined for destruction.

"This time is from 1985, when everyday Chinese accessed film photography, to 2006, when digital started taking over," he said. "It's really the birth of post-socialist China...."

You can read more from the article here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jan/04/negative-collection-camera-film-china

I can't quite explain how incredible our collaborative insight will prove. But what I do know is that we have been testing some ideas already and they are working very well and I will update you while in Beijing and of course the first showing of the progress will be at the FORMAT Photo Festival opening on the 7th March 2013.

More info here: http://www.formatfestival.com/artists/beijing-silvermine-2009-2013

Until then, my preparations await me!

Available from Photo-Eye & PhotoBookStore

The Photograph as Contemporary Art by Melinda Gibson from PhotoBookStore.co.uk on Vimeo.

I am very pleased to announce that you can purchase my first book, from both photo-eye in Santa Fe and from the UK at the PhotoBookStore. Both links are below and see above a video of the book.

photo-eye: http://www.photoeye.com/bookstore/citation.cfm?catalog=ZF315&i=&i2=

PhotoBookStore: http://www.photobookstore.co.uk/photobook-the-photograph-as-contemporary-art.html

Chinese Embassy, Kurt Schwitters, New Ideas...

Well, what a day I had yesterday, probably one of the best days of this year for definite and one to remember for a long time. Firstly off to the Chinese Embassy to put in for my Visa application, collection next week for my journey to Beijing!!! I am so excited I can't quite explain how inspiring this trip will be and what will be created, I organically await its development. 

Then onto the Tate Britain to see the new Kurt Schwitters exhibition. I have been eagerly awaiting this exhibit for sometime now after I heard the news about what was going to take place, and I can't quite explain to you how unbelievably moving, inspirational and stunning this show is. As you walk through the Tate Britain's entrance, through the double doors into the first room, you are struck by the sheer enormousness  and abundance of his works. As you turn to very corner, at every wall his collages, intermixed with his painting pull you closer to examine a mind set, a history and ethos so poetic, sensitive and thoughtful, one so honest and true it made my head pause and my heart pound. 

Paint so thickly applied, cotton so softly adhered, newspapers torn in such a way, every detail of every work is composed with a passion and deep understanding of the material applied and why it has its placed within the form. Schwitters process is so inspiring, and always has been to me. A great influence and lessons taught by his pieces, as you appreciate the life he lead as he made these works and the importance of his ideology in a time when he was deemed by the Nazi's, a degenerative artist.

The exhibition is vast, with every room you enter another pound in your chest, as you see his work move, change and develop collage, painting, sculpture, poems. Everything he touched, he touched with a sensitive hand and with his poetry and short stories a humour that is dadist and entertaining. Hearing him preform his poems is quite an experience!

Words, can't really do justice and in my words can't truly explain the magnitude this man has had on my practice and my mind set, I left the exhibition hours later with a warmth I haven't felt in years and a desire to produce work, ideas for my new collaborative project based out in Beijing. Above are some initial ideas that I worked on yesterday for this new project, more to follow as the process develops.

Amsterdam bound, next trip Beijing...

So it wouldn't be a new year without, some of the old... and what seems more appropriate than a trip to Amsterdam! I am off on Thursday to visit a few friends and see some wonderful shows, including my favourite Dutch duo Mr T & Mr R known as WassinkLundgren for their solo show at Foam Museum, but also a little bit of fashion at the Gasworks for Amsterdam Fashion Week. I know it will be filled with much laughter, wonderful works and then onto another adventure...

Soon after my return, I plan for an incredible trip, one of a lifetime as I prepare for a new collaborative project based out in China. I am off to Beijing on a residency to start producing an extraordinary body of work alongside an amazing Photography Collector which will debut at the Format Festival in March of this year. My works will be in their preliminary stages as we start our process, but what I can advise is that this is something worth waiting for and watching the progress from March into the later part of the year. More to follow as I get prepared and plan my trip.....

See WassinkLundgren's show here: http://www.foam.org/visit-foam/calendar/2013-exhibitions/wassinklundgren-one-group-show

PayPal Purchasing

You can now purchase your copy of "The Photograph as Contemporary Art" by simply emailing studio.melindajgibson@gmail.com and using your PayPal account to pay. It's is super quick and reliable and we ship worldwide. Don't miss out on your copy.....

studio.melindajgibson@gmail.com

Happy New Year - And a New Editorial... for Material Girl Magazine!

So a very Happy New Year to all! I have a feeling that 2013 is going to be super busy!! A great start for me as my new editorial is out in a lovely Fashion magazine from Austria called Material Girl. Shot in my old studio location, back in early November the lovely Marie Zucker took my portrait and here is the finished result.

The magazine is a really beautiful thing, well worth a look if you haven't yet seen one, all the good magazine stores stock it. See more here: http://materialgirl-mag.com/

Merry Christmas - Thank You Mercedes-Benz!

    

   

So here it is..... my commission for Mercedes-Benz, literally just finished and launched yesterday afternoon on MB! Magazine. It was a great project, where I worked with the amazing Lucid-Ly and MB crew on a bespoke project around the new A-Class AMG Sport based here in London. We travelled around to five different locations, all of which are inspirational for me and worked with a photographer to produce new material that I could re-use for collages. A very different take from my normal source material as I art directed the photographer to produce certain imagery I wanted to use!

A great project, resulting in a exciting and fun shoot last week, check out the article here: 

http://www5.mercedes-benz.com/en/zeitgeist/london-from-a-different-angle-melinda-gibson-a-class/

http://mb.mercedes-benz.com/en/article/4371/London+From+a+Different+Angle

After all this excitement, its time for a rest, so I bid you farewell and to have a very happy, joyful and Merry Christmas and look forward to new and exciting times in 2013...... and there is already something wonderful planned, where I am off to Beijing!!!!

Photo-eye Best Books of 2012

I have great pleasure announcing that my first book, "The Photograph as Contemporary Art" has been selected by Tom Claxton and Erik Kessels in Photo-eye's Best Books of 2012!

Tom Claxton writes, "Gibson's debut title intricately culls the pages of curator Charlotte Cotton's (2004) seminal book of the same name. The resulting re-appropriated photo-collages challenge our understanding of the original work and their canonization in photo history- a wonderfully smart, thoughtful and beautifully constructed object."

And Erik Kessels, "Every single one of these books were put together by hand and took about 3 hours to be finished. The photographic collage work of Gibson is very well expressed in this book full of stickers."

See more of the Best Books of 2012 here; http://www.photoeye.com/magazine_admin/index.cfm/bestbooks.2012

It Fashion Feature

While of this Farfetch promotion has been going on, I forgot to mention that I found a great article about my handmade books in this beautiful online magazine from Barcelona! Available in both Spanish and English the site is great and well worth a visit.

The feature talks through my handmade books and here is a little taster, 

"Around a year ago, photographer Joan Fontcuberta wrote at Babelia, El País’ literary supplement: “We’re witnessing a photobook boom. […] And all this takes place while bad omens predict both the end of printed paper and the death of photography.”

Firecracker’s October’s featured photographer, former assistant to Martin Parr or Wolfgang Tilmans and FOAM Magazine photography prize winner Melinda Gibson, seems to be determined to fight both of them: during the last Unseen fair, a brand new event for professionals and photography lovers which takes place in Amsterdam, created live a photobook –yes, a photography book, and yes, on printed paper– with the images of her project “The Photograph as Contemporary Art”.

Melinda Gibson seems to be determined to fight the end of printed paper and the death of photography."

Read more here: http://itfashion.com/en/culture/frames-en/melinda-gibson-y-sus-fotolibros-diy/

Planet Notion Feature

To follow on with the promotion surrounding Farfetch's commissions, while we were filming I got interviewed by Planet Notion Magazine. It was a great, little informal interview about my collaboration with Farfetch, talking more depth about the visuals behind the design and my thoughts surrounding Christmas as a whole, with reference to my medium Photography.

Here's a little exert from the lovely article, "Here at Notion, we got to visit the studio of Melinda Gibson. Having studied photography at London College of Communication, Melinda focuses on the way we see and look at things- namely within photography. Always working by hand, Melinda cuts out vital sections of photographs to see how this impacts our understanding of the image. 

PN: So what’s this piece about for you?                                                        MG: It’s about Christmas, but not in an obvious shiny and glittery way.

PN: Can you take us through it?                                                                      MG: Sure. I got all the images from old vintage magazines, and this first image, (middle top) is an image that I burnt with a candle, and behind it is from a selection of Christmas children’s toys, and then part of those images have been removed and replaced with a red backing- because it is Christmas after all.

The second image (left B&W) is from a Christmas festivity, in a pub setting with a couple having a drink. I removed their faces and replaced the mans face space with Christmas themed text, and the woman’s with an ink drawing which I traced from a 1950’s magazine of a traditional Christmas plant, which is also used in the man’s jackets.

The third image is of a boy, where I removed the face and hands and replaced them with wintery themed trees…"

See more here: http://www.planetnotion.com/2012/11/28/unwrap-christmas-with-farfetch-com/

Christmas Wrapping Paper Launched Today on Farfetch.com

So today is a very exciting day as my Christmas Wrapping Paper project for Farfetch.com goes live on their site! The paper I created forms the sidebars of the website with an exclusive feature on the project we worked on over the past few months. There is a great little film about my process and me making the work!

The feature includes personal pictures of my family at Christmas inter-mixed with pieces from current and older bodies of work. With texts stating, "Fashions favourite collages..." and "Melinda's work has graced the likes of AnOther Magazine, Harpers Bazaar, Maire Claire, Nowness and FOAM..." the feature is fantastic and being in the mix with other incredible artists like Meadham Kirchhoff, Margot Bowman and Gary Card this is just a wonderful festive project!

See more here: http://www.farfetch.com/